The Entropy Effect

She moved closer to him and put her arm around his shoulders, cuddling him. He hugged her tight, burying his face in her long loose hair, until he had shaken off the unease, and began to respond to her.

She leaned over him, letting her hair fall down in a curtain around them. When it tickled his neck and shoulders, he smiled. She caressed him, drawing warm patterns with her fingers and cool ones with her ruby ring.

“You are so beautiful,” Mandala said, and bent down to kiss him again before he could think of anything to say.

Jenniver Aristeides and Snnanagfashtalli sat across from each other in the duty room, playing chess.

They both preferred the classical two-dimensional board to the 3-D versions; it was somehow cleaner and less fussy, but it retained its infinite complexity.

“At least if I ask Mandala Flynn for a transfer she won’t spit in my face,” Jenniver said.

“No,” said Fashtall. “She is not like the other one, she is not the spitting type.”

“It’s just that I have such a hard time getting anybody to believe I don’t like to pound people into the ground every chance I get.” Jenniver shrugged. “I guess I can’t blame them.”

Fashtall raised her sleek head and gazed across the table at her, the pupils in her maroon eyes widening.

“ Ibelieve,” she said. ‘They will not say they do not believe you, when I am around. And no one will spit in your face.”

“He never actually did, you know,” Jenniver said mildly. “He couldn’t reach that far anyway.”

“Mandala Flynn’s predecessor is gone,” Fashtall said. “And Mandala Flynn is our officer. If she does not give you a transfer to Botany, she will tell you a reason, at least. I do not think she will hold you in place longer than she must, if she knows you are unhappy.”

“I’m scared to talk to her,” Jenniver said.

“She will not hurt you. And you will not hurt her. Have you watched her, at judo? No ordinary human on the ship could defeat her, not even the captain.”

“Could you?” Jenniver asked.

Fashtall blinked at her. “I do not play fair, by those rules.”

The Changeling laughed. Reflecting that Fashtall had far more sense of humor than anyone else gave her credit for, Jenniver moved her queen’s pawn.

After a moment, Fashtall growled.

Jenniver smiled. “You’re not even in check.”

“I will soon be. Driven by a pawn!” She made another irritated noise. “You think a move farther ahead than I, friend Jenniver, and I envy you.”

She suddenly turned, the spotted fur at the back of her neck rising, bristling.

“What is it?”

“Something fell. Someone. In the observatory.”

Fashtall bounded out of the duty room on all fours, and Jenniver followed, running easily in the absurdly light gravity. She passed Fashtall and reached the observatory first.

Mr. Spock stood swaying in the middle of the dimly-lit room, his eyes rolled back so far they showed nothing but white crescents, his hair disarrayed, blood running down the side of his face from a gash in his left temple, and, most strangely of all—once Jenniver noticed it—out of uniform, wearing a flowing, dark-brown tunic rather than his uniform shirt. She hurried toward him: her boot crunched on a shard that cracked like plastic. She hesitated, afraid as she often was that she had inadvertently damaged some fragile possession of the frail people around her. But the floor was littered with the amber fragments: whatever the damage was, it was not something she had caused.

Spock’s knees buckled and Jenniver forgot the broken bits around her: she leaped forward and caught the science officer before he fell. She held him up. Fashtall rose on her hind legs and touched his forehead.

“Fever,” she said. “High—much too high even for a Vulcan.”

Spock raised his head. “My observations ...” he said. “Entropy ...” There was a wild, confused look in his eyes. “Captain Kirk—”

“Fashtall, you go wake up Dr. McCoy. I’ll help Mr. Spock to sick bay.”

Snnanagfashtalli’s white whiskers bristled out: a gesture of agreement. She sprang over the broken instrument and disappeared into the corridor.

“I am all right,” Spock said.

“You’re bleeding, Mr. Spock.”

He put his hand to his temple; his fingers came away wet with blood. Then he looked at his sleeve, brown silk, not blue velour.

“Let me take you to sick bay,” she said. “Please.”

“I am not in need of assistance!”

She thought she was being cruel but she could not think of anything else to do but obey him. She was supporting most of his weight: she let him go, as slowly as she dared so he would have as much chance as she could give him to keep his feet. But as she had feared, his legs would not support him. He collapsed again, and again she kept him from falling.

She looked at the wall across the room, not meeting his eyes: if she pretended she had not noticed, perhaps he could pretend she had not seen.

“I am going to sick bay,” she said. “Will you come with me?”

“Ensign Aristeides,” he said softly, “my pride does not require quite so much protection. I would be grateful for your help.”